Pi Zero - the £4 computer

It began when Colin strolled into the office with a magazine in his hand, and casually mentioned he had just got his pi zero...

The stampede!

And Craig was gone, with me yelling "Get me one, too" after him as he (literally) sprinted out of the office, causing worry among those who had not been privy to the conversation.

And now we have 4 Pi Zeros (and 4 copies of the official Raspberry Pi Magazine "The MagPi") - probably the first time that a free computer, with a 1GHz CPU, and 512Mb of Ram has been given away on the cover of a magazine!

We're all Pi geeks anyway, and Craig goes out to a couple of local school code clubs per week. You can find out more about one of the schools that we support in our blog here

On the BBC News Tech site, people were reporting on Rory Cellan-Jones' Have Your Say that the newsagents were sold out, and that some of the online shops were sold out already.

About the Pi Zero

The Pi Zero really is a bare bones computer, mini HDMI, micro USB, micro SDcard, no network and if you really want to use it's GPIO then you probably need to pick up some soldering skills and solder on a GPIO header - but I've already done something similar with my Model B, to solder on a header for a tiny touch screen - it's not that difficult, you just need a steady hand and some patience.

For a distro, I've opted for the Debian Jessie Lite, downloaded, and then dd'ed onto a MicroSD card, then, a powered USB hub, a mini-HDMI-toHDMI cable,and the TV in the OpusVL meeting room, and we have a working Pi Zero

Adapting the Pi

It was a long week, waiting for the adapter kits to arrive. It is amazing to think that a mini-HDMI-HDMI adapter, a Micro-B-On-the-Go USB adapter and a set of GPIO headers cost the same as the Pi Zero! And make it look even smaller. Now I have some soldering to do!